What We Know About the 9 Astronauts Flying the New Commercial Ships

NASA has assigned the astronauts who will ride the first commercial capsules into orbit next year and bring human launches back to the U.S.

Their voyages are scheduled to begin next year, and they would be the first American astronauts to launch from US soil since 2011.

"Space has transformed the American way of life", NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstein said at the event.

Lawmakers in Congress, however, insisted that NASA still needed to develop its own rocket and space capsule, called the Space Launch System.

Astronaut Eric Boy is introduced as NASA announces the crew assignments for the first flight tests, missions of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceXCrew Dragon, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, U.S., August 3, 2018.

The CST-100 test flight will also include Christopher Ferguson, a former NASA astronaut and current Boeing commercial astronaut.

This is an endeavor that will return astronaut launches to USA soil for the first time since the space shuttle's retirement in 2011.

Victor Glover: Glover was selected as an astronaut in 2013 after a career in the Navy as a test pilot. She has logged 322 days in space. At nearly 240 feet long, more than 350 feet wide, nearly 70 feet tall and weighing in at around 925,335 pounds; a fair portion of the giant structure will likely survive re-entry and reach the Earth's surface like a fiery meteorite (between 53,500 and 173,250 pounds worth by NASA's estimate).

The announcement of crew for these first four flights is a nice morale booster for the Commercial Crew program, but there's still a long way to go.

The SpaceX crewed test flight, now scheduled for April 2019, will be flown by NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley.

SpaceX said it would fly crews by April.

A commercial Dragon cargo craft launched June 29 departed the International Space Station and returned to Earth on Friday with almost two tons of cargo and research samples. They're both the result of NASA's Commercial Crew Program: a almost 10-year-long, $8-billion effort to maintain access to orbit for U.S. astronauts. SpaceX is targeting November for its inaugural Crew Dragon test flight, but Boeing won't launch its passenger spacecraft Starliner until late this year or early next. Both SpaceX and Boeing were supposed to clear this hurdle past year, but Boeing is now likely to win certification in January, with SpaceX following it the next month.

A series of thruster firings propelled the Dragon capsule away from the space station, and the ship's Draco thrusters ignited at 5:23 p.m. EDT (2123 GMT) for a de-orbit burn. "So, our investment in American space exploration always pays back ... multiple folds in terms of the human condition", he added.

9-member crew announced by NASA.

The two astronauts that the SpaceX company will send later will be Mike Hopkins, who spent 166 days in the space lab, and Victor Glover, who will be making his debut. The two companies have also developed new spacesuits, modified their launch pads and established mission control teams to support the upcoming flights.

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